Pitch ,28 March, 2011
If the name of this four-day-old restaurant sounds familiar, it should. The little dining room tucked into a storefront on the ground floor of the parking garage at 11th Street and Oak is the newest location of restaurateur Mekedem Belete's Addis Ababa Cafe -- the sequel to his former venue at 1809 West 39th Street.
Belete closed the 39th Street location several years ago -- that location, last occupied by Matchstick Barbecue, is still empty. The new Addis Ababa has been a work in progress for several months, he told me. In fact, it's still a work in progress.
There are still dishes on the menu that he isn't preparing yet: meat sambusa pastries, for example, as well as hamburgers, cheeseburgers and fries, which he intends to sell along with traditional Ethiopian dishes such as Tibbs Watt, Gomen, Atiklet Watt and Doro Watt. Because the restaurant is located so close to many city offices,
Belete wants to lure in some of the diners who crowd into the Silver Spoon Cafe next door -- the people who want American food.
The afternoon I stopped into the new Addis Ababa, there were two single jurors (wearing their identification tags) sitting at separate tables and a city employee. We all had been ordered to choose that day's lunch special -- it was sort of a variation of the old Saturday Night Live "Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Chips" sketch: No matter what you requested from the menu, the kitchen seemed to be out of it.
That lunch special was composed of a scoop each of four of the vegetarian dishes and a dollop of Tibbs Watt (marinated beef cubes) and a roll of spongy injura bread. If you like the spicy, fragrant dishes from the legendary land -- or so the story goes -- of the Queen of Sheba, Addis Ababa does well by delicious collard greens, cabbage and potatoes cooked with garlic and ginger, cooked lentils and marinated meats.
By restaurant standards in this stretch of downtown, Addis Ababa is almost fancy. The tables are cloaked with white cloths. There are cloth napkins and china plates. No alcohol is served, but the employees at the restaurant insist that will be changing: "We're getting our liquor license soon," our waiter told us.
If the name of this four-day-old restaurant sounds familiar, it should. The little dining room tucked into a storefront on the ground floor of the parking garage at 11th Street and Oak is the newest location of restaurateur Mekedem Belete's Addis Ababa Cafe -- the sequel to his former venue at 1809 West 39th Street.
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| Mekedem Belete thinks downtown Kansas City is ready for Ethiopian cuisine -- and cheeseburgers. |
There are still dishes on the menu that he isn't preparing yet: meat sambusa pastries, for example, as well as hamburgers, cheeseburgers and fries, which he intends to sell along with traditional Ethiopian dishes such as Tibbs Watt, Gomen, Atiklet Watt and Doro Watt. Because the restaurant is located so close to many city offices,
Belete wants to lure in some of the diners who crowd into the Silver Spoon Cafe next door -- the people who want American food.
The afternoon I stopped into the new Addis Ababa, there were two single jurors (wearing their identification tags) sitting at separate tables and a city employee. We all had been ordered to choose that day's lunch special -- it was sort of a variation of the old Saturday Night Live "Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Chips" sketch: No matter what you requested from the menu, the kitchen seemed to be out of it.
That lunch special was composed of a scoop each of four of the vegetarian dishes and a dollop of Tibbs Watt (marinated beef cubes) and a roll of spongy injura bread. If you like the spicy, fragrant dishes from the legendary land -- or so the story goes -- of the Queen of Sheba, Addis Ababa does well by delicious collard greens, cabbage and potatoes cooked with garlic and ginger, cooked lentils and marinated meats.
By restaurant standards in this stretch of downtown, Addis Ababa is almost fancy. The tables are cloaked with white cloths. There are cloth napkins and china plates. No alcohol is served, but the employees at the restaurant insist that will be changing: "We're getting our liquor license soon," our waiter told us.
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